Some remarks on the semi-positivity theorems

We show that the dualizing sheaves of reduced simple normal crossings pairs have a canonical weight filtration in a compatible way with the one on the corresponding mixed Hodge modules by calculating the extension classes between the dualizing sheaves of smooth varieties. Using the weight spectral sequence of mixed Hodge modules, we then reduce the semi-positivity theorem for the higher direct images of dualizing sheaves to the smooth case where the assertion is well known. This may be used to simplify some constructions in a recent paper of Y. Kawamata. We also give a simple proof of the semi-positivity theorem for admissible variations of mixed Hodge structure in [FF] by using the theories of Cattani, Kaplan, Schmid, Steenbrink, and Zucker. This generalizes Kawamata's classical result in the pure case.Comment: 20 page

The Economic History of the Restoration Period, 1853-1885

This paper overviews the economic history of the period between 1853, the year when Commodore Perry's 'black ships' arrived at Shimoda, and 1885, the year that marked the end of the so-called Matsukata recession period. The chapter will trace economic, political and regime changes during this transitional period in the first four sections. After having explored the question of continuity and discontinuity, I will have a critical look at what the oft-quoted slogan of the new Meiji government, 'rich nation, strong army', meant. The penultimate section discusses the issue of whether or not early Meiji Japan was a developmental, plan-rational state by taking a close look at actual policy changes in the 1870s and 80s. The last section draws implications for the changing constellations in political economy after 1885.

Unveiling Historical Occupational Structures and its Implications for Sectoral Labour Productivity Analysis in Japan's Economic Growth

This paper aims to offer new estimates of gainfully occupied workers in Japan between 1885 and 1940. The estimates are made by taking explicitly widespread farm-family by-employment into account, and then they will be allocated into the primary, secondary and tertiary (PST) sectors. With the new workforce statistics and revised estimates of net output in the tertiary sector for the same period, we would also like to examine the levels of differentials in average labour productivity between the three sectors. The paper will show that labour productivity differentials between agriculture and manufacturing in early stages of Japan's industrialisation were not as wide as both Gerschenkronian and dual structurist arguments tended to assume for late industrialisers.

Japan's Civil Registration Systems Before and After the Meiji Restoration

This essay traces the evolution of Japan's systems of household and land registration from Tokugawa times to the period of early Meiji reforms in the 1870s and 80s. The paper pays due attention to the distinction between an early modern system designed by state authority and local forms of　registration practice. Thus, in the section on the Tokugawa period, one such local practice of having people 'disowned' and its consequence,　registerlessness, will be examined. The section on the Meiji reforms turns to the issue of continuity and discontinuity, while the next section discusses if any progress in terms of civil identity registration was made by these Meiji reforms. In order to illustrate the actual changes that took place at the local level, the essay begins with an eighteenth-century story about a peasant woman and her disputes with the village officialdom and ends with a case of family dispute that another village woman brought before court some 120 years later.

Money, credit and Smithian growth in Tokugawa Japan

In the latter half of the Tokugawa period economic growth, however sluggish its pace was, took place in the form of rural industrialisation and the expansion of inter-regional trade. This paper addresses the following questions: how capital was mobilised for such rural-centred growth in production and commerce, and how the quasi-capital markets worked in both the Osaka economy and in the countryside, with special reference to trends in interest rates over time, in a pre-modern setting of market segmentation. The paper will argue that although Tokugawa Japan's formal institutions were far from ideal, the credit systems did function as quasi-capital markets reasonably well within each commercial network formed through relational contracting, and that for the Smithian process of early modern growth to work, inter-regional competition mattered more than institutional maturity of the nation's market environment.

Progress toward the Determination of Complete Vertex Operators for The IIB Matrix Model

We report on progress in determining the complete form of vertex operators for the IIB matrix model. The exact expressions are obtained for those emitting massless IIB supergravity fields up to sixth order in the light-cone superfield, in which the conjugate gravitino and conjugate two-form vertex operators are newly determined. We also provide a consistency check by computing the kinematical factor of a four-point graviton amplitude in a D-instanton background. We conjecture that the low-energy effective action of the IIB matrix model at large N is given by tree-level supergravity coupled to the vertex operators.Comment: 34 page

Contrasts in Vital Rates: Madras and Punjab in the Colonial Period

It is well known that there have been persistent differences in demographic rates between northern and southern areas in post-independence India: in the north marital fertility is higher, infant mortality higher and life expectancy shorter than in the south. As Tim Dyson has shown for infant mortality, this probably has pre-independence origins. In this paper the post-WWII contrasts in demographic performances between north and south India will be traced back to the colonial period. By choosing Madras and Punjab, by selecting districts whose registration statistics are reasonably usable in each province (Madras: Coimbatore, Salem, North Arcot, South Arcot, and Tilnelvelli; Punjab: Gurdaspur, Jallundur, Amritsar, Hoshiarpur, Ferozepore, and Ambala, Karnal and Rohtak), and then by adopting W. Brass's relational Gompertz fertility model, logit life-table system and growth balance method, as exemplified by Dyson's seminal work on Berar, we estimate annual series of e0 and TFR for both provinces. The series clearly show that even in the colonial period both fertility and mortality were higher in the north than in the south, which will have wider implications in historical contexts.